Mumbling to myself: Being a nerd

No Music for Me

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:22:04 GMT

A couple of days ago my iPod Nano stopped powering on for me, a bit of poking around showed that I had most likely crunched it under something and broken some internal components, and nothing I could do would bring it back.

Funnily enough I was quite happy about this - as I finally have a reason to go out and buy a Zune. I have a number of friends with Zunes, and I think they are quite nice (plus I work for Microsoft), but I could not bring myself to buy one while I had a working iPod.

Before rushing out to buy a Zune I thought I would use my Creative Zen as my interim music player - but after syncing up my music I found that the Zen wouldn't play them. After a couple of minutes of resetting and replacing batteries the Zen started coming up with a nice "send me back to the manufacturer" display.

Grrr....

So until I get a Zune my music player at the moment is my PSP - which is far from an ideal music solution - but it is better than nothing.

Cheers,
Ben

5 Years at Microsoft

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:55:07 GMT

Today was my 5 year anniversary as a Microsoft employee. As such my manager took the group out to lunch, and I was presented with the "5 year obelisk":

(Personally I have always questioned the idea of giving a large, heavy object that could easily used for bludgeoning to a potentially embittered employee). This also came with a number of nice cards and letters from Bill and Steve - but the thing that cracked me up was that there was also a "thank-you" card to my wife, for tolerating the fact that as someone who has worked at Microsoft for 5 years has undoubtedly had the time when they spent too much time at work and not enough time with family :-)

I do not have much to say about hitting this milestone - other than to say that I am still loving my job and having a great time.

Cheers,
Ben

So Tired

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:19:10 GMT

Man I hate daylight saving. Sunday was "daylight savings" day, and as someone who grew up with no daylight savings I still can't understand this - really. Because of daylight savings I have only got about 5 hours sleep a night for the last two nights.

Daylight savings and Viva Pinata that is.

On the plus side I am now over 80% of the way through Viva Pinata (only bought it last Wednesday) so within a couple of days I should have adjusted to daylight savings and completed Viva Pinata and can get back to regular sleep again.

Cheers,
Ben

Automatically Starting Elevated Programs under Vista

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:06:03 GMT

One of the biggest changes with Windows Vista is the need to manually 'elevate' an application if it needs to run with administrative privilege (this is called 'UAC'). Personally I love this feature - but there are times when this is annoying.

One particular problem area is if you need a program to run 'elevated' automatically when you login to the computer. This is problematic for two reasons:

It means you will be prompted every time you login.
Vista actually detects and blocks this from working.

Thankfully there is a sneaky / evil work around for this. Now - before I continue - I want to be clear that what I am about to outline does technically lower the security of your system - so only do it if you know what you are doing / have no other option (mind you - it is much more secure than just disabling UAC).

The work around is to create a task that runs elevated whenever you login. This means no prompting and no blocking. What you need to do is login as yourself and:

Open the Start menu go to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and open Task Scheduler.
Select to Create Task.
On the General tab give the task a Name and Description. Leave it as running with your account and to Run only when user is logged on then check the option to Run with highest privileges.
Go to the Triggers tab and click on New...
Select At log on for the Begin the task: option and select that it only run for a Specific user or group: (yourself). Then hit OK.
Go to the Actions tab and click on New...
Leave the Action: as Start a program and enter your program details, then hit OK.
If you are running on a laptop - go the the Conditions tab and uncheck the Power options so the task will run even if you are on battery power.
Go to the Settings tab and check Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed and uncheck Stop the task if it runs longer than:
Hit OK.

Now you are all set to go.

Cheers,
Ben

Fixing Annoying Prompts with Intel Drivers on Vista

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:35:48 GMT

For a while now I have been getting multiple prompts each time I login to Windows Vista. The culprit is the latest Intel video drivers. For some reason they manage to install three executables that are 1) stored in System32 2) configured to run automatically 3) not marked as trusted. The result is that every time I login I get three prompts with a title of "Open File - Security Warning" asking if I am sure that I want to run these programs. Unfortunately the handy "Don't Ask Me Again" check box on these prompts seem to do nothing.

The programs that I get asked about are:

igfxtray.exe
hkcmd.exe
igfxpers.exe

After a bit of poking around I found the solution to my problem. These executables have somehow got themselves tagged as "untrusted" - but because they are stored in \Windows\System32 trying to mark them as trusted will just silently fail. What you need to do is to go to \Windows\System32 and select each file and:

Open the properties for the file.
Go to the "Security" tab and "Edit" the permissions.
Explicitly add your user account with full control (having a group you belong to have full control is not sufficient).
Go to the "General" tab and click on "Unblock".
Click OK.

Once you have done this for the 3 executables mentioned you will never see prompts again.

Cheers,
Ben

Dammit, Emacs.

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:44:31 GMT

I saw this the other day and it made me chuckle:

For the record - VI is my preferred *nix editor. Why? Because that is what my dad taught me - which strikes me as a profoundly odd statement.

This one is for you Joe!

Cheers,
Ben

Wii Absentia

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:16:49 GMT

Well - what can I say. I like the Wii - I really do. The problem is that I just don't play on the Wii. More to the point I do not play on the Wii anywhere as much as I do on my other gaming devices (compared to my darling wife I play on the Wii a lot :-).

So why is this the case? Well - the first big issue is location. Most of the time you can find me happily hiding behind my fortress of electronic devices. Here I can access 7 computers, 8 gaming consoles / devices, watch TV, listen to music and use the phone. The nice thing about this setup is that enables me to easily shift in and out of activities. I can work for a while, watch a carton show, play some Halo and then shift back to work. But this is not where my Wii is. The Wii is out in the lounge room. The reason for this is that:

As a "family oriented" device it does not belong in my fortress - where others are only allowed to enter on permission.
There is not enough space in my fortress to stand and swing around a Wiimote.

The next issue is availability. While the children are awake it would be folly for me to attempt to play a private game on the Wii. So all games must be 1) kid friendly 2) played with one of the kids. Once the children are asleep there is a good chance that my wife will want to watch TV on the TV (I have my own private media center PC for such activities).

This means that my Wii experience has been focused on Wii Play, Wii Sports and Cooking Mama - while Zelda has had less than an hour of my attention.

The final issue is the Wiimote itself. In my opinion it is both a blessing and a curse for the Wii. It enables modes of game play that were not imaginable before - unfortunately it is awkward for most of the modes of gameplay that were available before. Indeed many of the Wii games would be better off without the Wiimote (as artfully highlighted in this - not PG - review of Super Mario Galaxy).

Don't get me wrong - I still like the Wii. And I have high hopes of one day spending more time with it. But not now.

Cheers,
Ben

Shilling for my place of work

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:22:40 GMT

Okay - I acknowledge that this is evil Microsoft marketing - but who cares, it is too much fun:

Go play it now!

Cheers,
Ben

Long Showers

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:02:20 GMT

I have always been one to have long showers. Werona remains amazed by this (she has very short showers). The problem is that I (like many others) find the shower to be the best place to think. The bigger problem is that I often get so focused on my chain of thought that I forget about actually showering. A couple of days ago I had a classic case of this.

I got in the shower, started washing my hair, and started thinking about a technical problem at work. I hit upon a potential solution and was soon getting out of the shower thinking about who to email about this. As I turned off the shower I realized that I had forgotten to use any soap, so I stopped and got back into the shower. However as I grabbed the soap I immediately started thinking about the technical problem. By the time I got out of the shower the second time I paused and realized that I had no recollection as to whether I had actually used the soap or not.

By the third time I got in the shower I was mentally saying to myself "Focus! Focus! Think only about showering".

Cheers,
Ben

I Love Windows Home Server!

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:37:53 GMT

A while ago Microsoft released a new product called Windows Home Server

(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx). I was interested in this product primarily because I provided me a way to put a bunch of disks together and have them appear as a single large network disk (like a NAS) and it also provided data redundancy (like RAID). But the key thing for me was that it would allow me to add random sized disks at random - and take advantage of the new space (if you want to know how this magic works - go here).

Traditionally I have been someone who just bought a new $100 disk when I was running out of space - and the only redundancy that I had was when I thought to manually copy data to multiple locations. Needless to say - disks would fail and I would lose large amounts of data (which would cause much grief for me).

With my most recent computer purchase I decided that enough was enough - and I would get a nice RAID setup so I could sustain disk failure. But I quickly hit upon the problem that I filled up my RAID - and now adding more disk space would either involve going back to non-redundant storage - or spending over $400 to add a new RAID. Neither of which were attractive.

I did not want to spend a lot of money on the home server - so I did the worst thing possible - and got the cheapest motherboard / CPU / memory combo I could find on newegg.com (~$150) scavenged my hardware collection for the rest of the bits and put together a home server. I then proceeded to move all of my disks into the home server one at a time. I now have just over 3TB of disk in my home server and all the computers in my house only have one disk in them (for the system disk). I have all of my data on the home server and could not be happier.

Now - Home Server did successfully fill my data storage needs - but it has also provided me with a number of other features that I have come to love:

Integrated backup support.

All my desktop machines are getting backed up nightly now - including my wife's laptop. This is something that I have never had before and certainly wouldn't have gone to the hassle of setting up. With Home Server there was practically no setup involved to get this working.
Remote Desktop portal.

I am now completely hooked on being able to remote desktop into anyone of my multiple computers from work (or any other location).
Secure HTTP access to my shares.

Being able to grab some files from home when I am at work in an easy and secure fashion just rocks. I no longer worry about whether I put the latest copy of a document on my laptop - because I can get it if it is at home anyway.
Network health indication.

With the Windows Home Server connector software I know immediately if something goes wrong on any of my computers. If there is a serious network error - or antivirus stops working on any computer - I (on my desktop) immediately get an alert. In the last couple of weeks there have been at least three times when I have been alerted of serious problems on remote computers that I simply would not have noticed if I did not have the connector software installed.

Now as I have mentioned, I put this server together out of spare parts, so about a week ago one of the hard disks in it did actually fail - and Home Server handled this like a champion. I received a network alert, shutdown home server, removed the disk and booted it back up. No data was lost and the only downtime was the time it took for me to remove the virtual hard disk.

The closing comment I would like to make is this: I love having all of my data on a central redundant server. Only last night did I blow away my desktop computer (another separate hard disk failure - I will not go into the details here) and while this normally would have been a catastrophic moment for me - it was only a minor irritation. I had lost no data and it just meant that I would have to spend a couple of hours rebuilding the system. Woo Hoo!

Cheers,
Ben

Data back, computer dead...

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:48:58 GMT

Well - with some quick thinking I was able to locate another computer with an identical RAID controller to the one on my recently deceased computer. And I have been able to get all of my data back (yay!).

Unfortunately the motherboard on my old system is now useless. I have returned it to the guys who I bought it from, who are going to try and get ASUS to replace the motherboard, but that may take weeks.

In the mean time I have actually switched to using my Mac Mini as my main desktop computer.

This has been an interesting experience for me.

To give some background: I have a number of computers, all of which are designed for very special purposes (file server, media server, software test box, etc...). My main computer is used primarily for: Gaming, email / office, watching Anime. Given this the computer that was closest to my desired configuration was my Mac Mini (the other computers would have needed hours of software installation to get them where I want to go).

Now, I have been a long time Mac user, but have always preferred the PC. I used Mac OS X heavily while I was working at Connectix - but now that I am no longer working on software that is being developed for the Mac, I tend to use them a lot less regularly. So going back to using a Mac heavily has bought back both happy and unhappy thoughts about that platform.

Here is a rough summary of my thoughts of using a Mac again:

I still find Windows to be more usable. Only just - but Windows still wins in my books.
I still hate the dock. I have far too many applications / etc... for it to be useful.
I still think that Mac OS X is the prettiest Unix out there.
I still like to have a full Unix shell environment handy to mess around in.

The one thing that has really struck me this time on the Mac is the lack of software packages out there for the Mac. In just a few days there have been a variety of tasks that I wanted to do on the Mac - which I can do on Windows - but have been unable to find software for on the Mac (usable speech recognition, region free DVD playing, and others). I have never really had a problem with this in the past - but this time it is really bugging me.

So for now I am going to continue to use the old faithful Mac Mini while I wait for my desktop to return. The question is how long am I going to go before I install Vista on it :-)

Cheers,
Ben

Data loss

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:47:36 GMT

I am almost at the end of an ambitious ‘data centralization’ effort in my household. I have been working to get all of the disks out of various computers in my house and to get them all in a big honkin’ Windows Home Server. This has been a long and arduous process. But last night I finally got down to my last computer – my main desktop computer – with it’s 1TB of data stored on a RAID 10 array.

By 9 am this morning I had all of the data moved across except for the last ~80GB.

For some reason it was at this stage that I decided to flash the BIOS on my system. In retrospect this was a profoundly dumb idea. 5 minutes later I had a computer that would no longer turn on. No BIOS, no recovery mode, nothing.

Now this would not be so bad – except that I had 80GB of data locked in a RAID10 array that relied on that motherboard functioning correctly. And of all the data to be left – it is the irreplaceable stuff. You know: family photos, historical documents, work material, etc… All the Anime I have downloaded? It is safe on the new server. All the ISO images of CDs I have that could be easily recreated? On the new server. The stuff I really care about – nope.

The sad thing is that this is not a first for me. Those who know me well know that I wander from one monumental data loss to another – and still I learn nothing.

Just last week I blew up a system ‘cause I got too adventurous with a disk sector editor.

Sigh… Well – I have one last shot at getting my data back. It is a long shot but I am working on it at the moment.

Wish me luck!

Cheers,
Ben

Surprised by power management

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:15:41 GMT

One piece of background that you need to understand this post:

I am a power management bigot. When I get a new computer or install a new operating system one of the first things I do is to disable any power management feature I can find. Personally I have had too many bad experiences with power management to do otherwise.

Well - with that out of the way - I recently found myself involved in a merry game of 'case swapping'. I am building a new Windows Home Server for myself and decided that it needed to go in the biggest / nicest case that I had. Which then caused me to shuffle motherboards through cases in order to get every system in the appropriate case.

Unfortunately the system that lost out in this process was my second Windows Media Center. It is a beefy dual proc Opteron with 3GB ram - and it is now sitting in a $20 cheap case. Needless to say - when I first put this system together the lack of cooling in the case combined with the lack of acoustic buffering meant that my Media Center now sounded like a jet plane about to take off.

However - it was late at night and I did not really want to rewire a whole bunch of machines - so I took a risk and enabled the dynamic fan speed option in the BIOS - and I am impressed! This computer is now one of the quietest systems in my computer room - and after a day of close monitoring it does seem to be regulating it's temperature quite well.

Obviously it will get loud again if the machine is under load - but I am okay with that (plus - this machine is rarely under full load).

Cheers,
Ben

Having fun with StatCounter

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:06:54 GMT

Having run my work blog for a number of years now - and having just recently started this blog - I have come to the conclusion that most blogging sites / engines do a really lousy job of allowing the blogger to look at the statistical information about who is hitting their blog.

Thankfully I recently stumbled upon StatCounter and now I am perfectly happy. You can sign up for a free account at StatCounter - and they will give you a snippet of HTML to put on your blog. Once you have done this you can gain access to information such as:

How many page hits you get a day.
How many unique visitors you get a day.
How many returning visitors you get a day.
What OS, browser, screen resolution your visitors use.
What nationality your visitors are (okay - what country they are currently connecting to the Internet from).
What web search led them to your blog.
What path they took through your blog (e.g. which page did they load first, then which pages did they load after that).

All in all - a whole lot of fun.

So you may be wondering 'how can this all be free'? Well the fine folks over at StatCounter have a simple business model. You pay for the size of your statistical data log on their server. By default you get 500 log entries for free, if you want more than that you need to pay.

Now - for my personal blog which gets less than 20 visitors a day - it is going to be weeks before I fill up my log and start losing detailed information about visitors. My work blog - on the other hand - blows through the log in about an hour. I still find StatCounter useful for my work blog though - as there are some basic statistics that still get tracked once you have filled up your log, and the advanced statistics become more of a 'who visited my blog in the last hour or so' kind of thing.

Anyway - if you run a blog and want to get more information about your blog traffic than your blog engine / provider gives you - go check out StatCounter.

Cheers,
Ben

Passing the baton of being a gamer nerd

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:03:22 GMT

When I got my Nintendo GameBoy DS Lite – my GameBoy SP immediately went to my children. They have been very happy with this arrangement (though Isaac has been making envious statements about his GameBoy not being as good as mine) but the GameBoy SP is getting a bit old and beat up. In the last couple of months I have had to resort to the traditional method of dealing with an aging cartridge based system – which is to say that when a game fails to load I remove the cartridge, blow firmly and evenly in the cartridge slot (to get rid of dirt, dust, etc…), reseat the cartridge and then restart the system. Usually this gets the GameBoy going after one or two tries.

Well – the other day Isaac came into my computer room and asked if he could play on the GameBoy (this is kept on my shelf of ‘small electronic devices that need to be plugged into power to charge’). I said “Sure” and he proceeded to grab the GameBoy, and the game that he wanted to play (Super Mario Kart). By the time he got to sitting on the couch it was clear that the game had failed to load (I had heard to GameBoy power on sound – but had not heard the sounds of Super Mario Kart starting).

However – to my surprise – rather than coming and asking me for help Isaac calmly took out the cartridge, blew in the slot, reseated the cartridge and restarted the system. This time it work – and Isaac excitedly exclaimed “Yes!” to himself and started to play.

As I sat at my computer desk watching all of this I could not help but feel a moment of fatherly, gaming nerd, pride in my little boy :-)

Cheers,
Ben

Greg! The Stop Sign!

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:31:18 GMT

He, he. That's right - I am sitting in my office answering emails while listening to TISM. This can only lead to bad things.

For those who don't know what I am talking about:

Greg! The Stop Sign!
The guy who slagged the football team -
Those yobs were not for him
Turns into a real estate agent
Who believes in discipline;
That guy who's the first to use cocaine,
The wild boy breaking free,
Ends up in a court of law
As a prosecuting QC;
Remember the school captain? -
Success was a matter of time;
I can hear her now as she screams,
'Greg! You missed the stop sign!'
Forget Snoop Doggy Dogg
Forget ol' Ice T
The true word out on the street
Is produced by the TAC
What good's the use of striving?
As life's road in front unravels
We get to do the driving
But don't choose the direction we travel.
Do your homework, or wag for weeks
And graffiti the Dandenong line;
It don't matter when you hear that scream:
'Greg! You missed the stop sign!'
Some time in the next ten thousand years
A comet's gonna wipe out all trace of Man -
I'm banking on it coming before
My end of year exam.
The rich kid becomes a junkie
The poor kid an advertiser
What a tragic waste of potential -
Being a junkie's not so good either.
Your folks struggled hard for what you've got,
You are the fruit of their vine;
But who cares what you sow when what you reap
Is: 'Greg! You missed the stop sign!'
Bought a car just the other day
Man could that baby run
But you know what they always say:
There's always a better one.
Got a tumour in my brain
Its creeping to my lungs
And I've searched around in vain
Can't find me a better one.
Hardwired into everyone's head
Is the person they're gonna be
Growing up ain't a matter of choice
It's a matter of wait and see.
And so kids, yeah, you can do it!
You can do your best
Girls can do anything
You can pass the test
I'm OK, you're OK, We're all right, we're fine
I thought I saw a semi-trailer
Greg! You missed the stop sign!

Speaking of which - if anyone in Oz is reading - grab me a copy of "Machiavelli and the Four Seasons" if you ever see it. The only place I can find it online is selling it second hand for $70 (yikes!).

Cheers,
Ben

I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old.

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:02:41 GMT

Every now and then I get "stuck" on a song - and find myself spending days (literally) listening to that one song over and over again. I have learnt over time to use headphones when I get in this mood - 'cause while it makes me very happy it seems to drive any normal people insane.

Thankfully I know that this is a family thing - as both my sister and I can recollect one summer vacation in the early 90's when she bought a single CD from "The Dukes" which had a song that we liked called "Gonna get high". The reason why we remember this song in particular is because we downloaded the shareware version of Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure on the same day that she got the CD and spent a marathon day together doing nothing but playing Cosmo and listening to this one song (over and over and over again). To this day both Emma and I have a deep mental association between this game and this song (if we see / hear one we immediately remember the other in vivid detail).

So today I am happily listening to one song on repeat as I work. "I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old." by Cat Stevens:

I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old.
I buy the nicest things from a super market store
Vitamin land and marzipan and I know just what they're all for
I've organized my useless life in a way I've never done before
Even visit the dentist now
But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old
I just can't wait to see that city on the moon
With air conditioned gardens that'll play your favorite tune
I'll see my feet upon that street if it's the last thing that I'll do
Even sweep the roads to be there
But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old
I'll see my feet upon that street if it's the last thing that I'll do
Even sweep the roads to be there
But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

Cheers,
Ben

Thank you Nintendo!

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:02:30 GMT

When I woke up this morning I was a bitter, angry man. I was in a lot of pain physically, and after not sleeping well for almost a week, the medication I'd been provided with to help me sleep had clearly not worked. Getting up out of bed I was in a truly foul mood. Worst of all, I knew that a bunch of people were going to be coming over tonight and bringing their children with them. We had been planning to let the children play on the Wii, but ours had mysteriously stopped working a couple of days earlier.

I was in no mood to do so, but I decided to get the support call over and done with, and called Nintendo support before heading off to work. I was expecting the usual run around, followed by being asked to answer 20 inappropriate questions, before finally being told that I needed to mail my hardware somewhere and wait three weeks for it to be fixed.

I was greeted with the usual phone prompt menu, but to my surprise was directed to a real human after only selecting two options (I have a new issue, and it is with a Wii). The person I talked to was very helpful, and after quickly listening to the steps I'd taken, concluded that the Wii was broken and needed to be serviced.

After a brief discussion we figured out that I actually drive past their customer service center on my way to work every day. He suggested that I just dropped the system off myself, and said that it wouldn't take more than 45 minutes to fix. When asked him if I would need an incident number, or something like that, when taking the system in he responded that it wouldn't be necessary as he had entered all the data into their system already.

Well, I did just that. And after 20 minutes the customer service representative came out to me and gave me a new Wii, explaining that they'd been unable to fix the problem but they had transferred all my saved game data to this new system which they were giving to me free of charge, as the system was still under its original 12 month warrantee.

By the time I arrived at work I was actually incredibly cheery, all because of the good customer service I had received from Nintendo. So thank you very much Nintendo!

Cheers,
Ben

Vista speech recognition tip

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:06:33 GMT

I've been using Vista speech recognition for a while now and have been seeing occasional crashes. This is very frustrating when you're trying to use speech recognition as your sole input method. Well, after exchanging some e-mail with the speech recognition team I've been informed that there was a known issues with the feature in Vista speech recognition where it parses your documents to increase recognition accuracy.

Sure enough, disabling this feature on my computers has made speech recognition much more stable (in fact I haven't seen a crash in days). To disable this feature you need to right-click on the speech recognition toolbar, select configuration and open speech recognition control panel. Then click on advanced speech options and uncheck allow computer to review your documents and mail to improve speech recognition accuracy.

There you go, now things should be much more stable.

Cheers,
Ben

Windows Vista voice recognition and the command prompt

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:26:52 GMT

Well, I'm having a particular lousy week for arthritis. Worst of all, after trying extra hard to get to bed on time last night to ensure a good night's sleep (and some relief from arthritis) I ended up waking up about every 2 hours, for reasons that I am unable to fathom. So my arthritis is now worse than it's been in a while, and I'm back to using voice recognition today (indeed, this post is being written with voice recognition).

One thing that I struggled with for while with Windows Vista voice recognition was how to drive the command prompt. All my attempts at doing so were miserable failures, until I contacted someone on the Windows Vista voice recognition team and discovered the secret solution.

I could not find this documented anywhere but Windows Vista voice recognition has a special "typing mode". To activate this you need to say "start typing". Once you've done this you can rapidly speak single letter commands and it will type them out. So to do a recursive directory listing you just need to say 'd', 'i', 'r', 'space', 'forward slash', 's', 'enter'. And then finish up by saying "stop typing".

Neat, huh?

Cheers,
Ben

MGTEK dopisp - Sync your iPod with Windows Media Player

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:18:52 GMT

As an iPod and Windows Media Center user I have always had a bit of a problem. I wanted to keep a central music store on my Media Center - and then sync it to my iPod. I have tried a number of approaches and third party tools - but never was happy with the results - until now.

MGTEK dopisp (http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/) allows you to sync your iPod with Windows Media Player just like the iPod was a 'Plays for sure' device. This is exactly what I needed.

Now I have all my music on the Media Center, my various desktop computers have been configured to have their 'Music' folders redirected to the network share on my Media Center that holds all the music (yes - this is possible and simple). Now when I get a new CD I can rip it on any computer - and it instantly appears everywhere. And, next time I plug my iPod into my main computer it too automatically pulls down the new music.

I am very happy.

Cheers,
Ben

I can't talk to Oaktree...

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:22:22 GMT

Oaktree - you sent me a question about VSMT, but I do not have permission to send a reply to you. So - short answer: Yes, this should work and I have done it. Make sure that you are using the version of VSMT that is included with ADS 1.1.

If you need more help - let me know.

Cheers,
Ben

Swelling Zen

Mon, 07 May 2007 07:28:55 GMT

About a year and a half ago I bought a Creative Zen portable media center. My main reason for getting this was to entertain my children on long car trips / airplane trips - and it has worked well for this purpose. However, I have always wanted to use it more regularly - but have not been able to get it to sync correctly with my media center computer.

Well, now that I have upgraded to using Vista media center, I thought I would see if my Zen did a better job of syncing. After a bit of searching, I found the Zen up the back of one of my desk drawers. Unfortunately it looked like a monkey had taken to it with a screwdriver (and I certainly could not remember doing it myself). One end of the Zen was split open, and I could not get the battery cover off.

So, the first thing I did was to try and get all of the screws I could see out of the Zen, and the moment I got the last screw out the entire Zen flew apart. A moments inspection of the debris revealed that the LiON battery had swelled to over three times its normal size:

Thankfully, I was able to put the Zen back together and it is still working fine, plus a replacement battery is only going to cost $25 dollars. The moral of all of this? I think I will keep a closer eye on my various electronic devices, rather than letting them rot in the back of a drawer.

Cheers,
Ben

Great Office 2007 Ads

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:52:45 GMT

I stumbled across these ads for Office 2007 the other day - and I think they are great. *Finally* a Microsoft ad campaign that I am happy to show off:

The Quest

Mesmerized

The Divider

The Stranger

Nightmare

Cheers,
Ben